Welcome to my World

Monday, August 13, 2012

OK, last week was less than a stellar week for getting my body and my finances into shape. I drank one night, and I am officially maxed out on all of my credit cards. My eating has been unchecked, including an unfortunate encounter with ice cream. (Keep in mind that my doctor has warned me that I'm pre-diabetic and need to drastically change my habits.)

So today is the day I climb back up on that wagon. I've stuck to my diet, and I even dragged myself to the gym. Time will tell...

A Hunk of Inspiration

I went to see Total Recall last weekend. (Speaking of reboots, more on that below...) One of the previews was for the upcoming James Bond film, starring hunky Daniel Craig. And I decided that he would be my weight loss inspiration. It's not that I think I'm going to end up looking like his twin. Instead it's more the fact that he is my age (a couple of years older, actually). Since he is still (rightly) being cast as a hottie, it makes me think that it's not too late for me to be the fittest and best-looking I've ever been.

This is me Summer 2013 (Tentative)

So Was It Real? Or Rekall?

***WARNING: SPOILER ALERT***

Even though it hasn't had the best reviews, I really enjoyed Total Recall. Colin Farrell did a great job and is definitely easy on the eyes. The question at the end of the film is whether any of it actually happened or was it all the fake memories his character sought to have implanted from Total Rekall. I have a theory that people like me—people whose grip on reality is a little shaky—tend to believe it was all a hallucination while the more firmly grounded take it at face value.

Assuming everything that happens in the movie is occurring in "real" life, it begs the question about the main character's redemption and change of heart. Colin Farrel's character was the top, most ruthless intelligence agent working for the fascist government. He used the technology employed by Total Rekall to infiltrate the rebel leadership so that even he was unaware of being a double-agent. However, his constructed persona truly sympathized with the rebels and assisted them in achieving their goals, even after he found out the truth. (This plot device was actually almost identically explored in one of my recent video games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.)

Looking beyond the happy ending brought on by the main characters' refusal to go back to being his former "evil" self, what does it say about the nature of humans when his internal morality is imposed upon him by an external set of chemistry? Now the materialist would argue that this demonstrates human beings are nothing more that wetware with absolutely no self-determination or free will. Consciousness is an illusion and nothing more than a pre-determined chemical reaction. But I would suggest that the spiritually minded could just easily argue that it simply demonstrates the fact that God/the universe/life gives everyone a chance a redemption. What do you think?